Balkan Sans Stencil

About

Balkan Stencil typeface system translates Latin into Cyrillic script and vice versa, reconciling Croatian and Serbian cultural, ethnic, religious and political identities with the aim of furthering communication and tolerance.

Available in
  • Cyrillic
One ABuy
One A
Two ABuy
Two A
Three ABuy
Three A
B
B
One ABuy
One A
Balkan Sans Stencil In Use

Design concept

Balkan Stencil is a bi-script Latin and Cyrillic typeface system rooted in the linguistic proximity of languages of former Yugoslavia (Bosnian, Montenegrin, Croatian and Serbian). The Balkan typeface system depoliticises and reconciles the scripts, for the sake of education, tolerance and, above all, communication. Balkan transliterates and translates Croatian Latin into Serbian Cyrillic and vice versa, thus the fonts serve as educational software capable of reconciling disparate scripts.

Balkan Sans Stencil font, design concept

Four styles

There are two styles of Balkan Stencil– style A situates the Latin characters on top, and Cyrillic at the bottom, while style B reverses this order. There are three more substyles (1, 2, 3) in option A – each with slightly different treatments of elements that exceed the bounding box of the words.

Balkan Sans Stencil font, four styles

Transliteration options

Originally, Balkan was developed for writing Serbian and Croatian, which share the same sounds. Later, we expanded Balkan to also include other Cyrillic- and Latin-based languages, which was a complex task as there are a large number of these, and there is no single agreed standard for its transliteration into Latin script. We reviewed the most common romanisation schemes to create OpenType Stylistic Sets that encompass most common options for transliterating Russian, Serbian, Bulgarian and Ukrainian letters into English and German.

Balkan Sans Stencil font, Transliteration options

  • AwardsTDC Typographic Excellence 2012, Special Jury Award at 23rd Biennal of Design Slovenia 2012, Typographica Favorite Typefaces of 2012, Grand Prix Croatian Designers Society 2016
  • Released2012

Cyrillic

  • Abaza
  • Balkar
  • Belarusian
  • Bosnian
  • Bulgarian
  • Crimean Tatar
  • Kumyk
  • Macedonian
  • Montenegrin
  • Mordvin (Erzya)
  • Mordvin (Moksha)
  • Nogai
  • Russian
  • Rusyn
  • Serbian